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notsonewuser comments on Cynical About Cynicism - Less Wrong
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What about religious people who take vows of celibacy?
I think people care more about self-preservation than reproduction, honestly. I know I do!
Edit: Upon reflection, and receiving some replies here, I actually think Tim made a pretty strong case. However, though "playing chess" may be the "single most helpful simple way to understand" Deep Blue's behavior, it is wrong to say this of "trying to reproduce" for human behavior. You could predict only a very small percentage of my behavior using that information (I've never kissed a girl or had sex, despite wanting to) - whereas, using "self-preservation" and "seeking novelty", you could predict quite a bit of it. I suspect this is not just true of me, but of many people.
Edit 2: Though you could poke holes in my first edit. Like, maybe the reason I don't try to reproduce now is only because I've failed in the past. But this hinges on being a violation of Tim's point. Also, see this later comment I made, which I think is pretty much a knockdown refutation.
Edit 3: See this comment by memoridem for a succinct summary of my position. Somehow, none of my comments in this conversation came out clearly.
True in the abstract, but once people actually have offspring, they don't hesitate to, for example, interpose themselves between an aggressor and their children.
Also, airlines constantly remind people that in case of emergency they should put their own oxygen mask on before helping others with theirs, from which I guess that people would otherwise do otherwise.
Consider that many of them probably fail and some of them probably take the vow after having children. Those who don't are so rare you might want to consider them defective from the perspective of propagation of genes. People have genetically inherited diseases too.
It's reasonable to assume that the value of self-preservation declines with age and the number of children. Self-preservation in most instances seems to be instrumental to reproduction.
What about people who adopt children from a foreign country, rather than having their own biological children? I personally know a couple who did that. (I plan on doing the same if I get married - maybe not from a foreign country, but definitely adopting.)
Does it matter really? From my perspective Tim proposes an economical tool for thinking about a system's goals, but probably won't lead to much insight and will cause bias compared to more labor intensive methods.
I think this post could clear most of your confusion about the connection between your genes and your goals.
What do I seem confused about to you?
People usually ask questions to clarify some confusion. I don't know what yours is, but thought the article might be helpful since it elucidates this subject. Have you read it?
Organisms obviously don't directly optimize their genetic fitness. Deep Blue obviously doesn't directly optimize winning chess. If you want to economically predict their actions however, finding something they seem to optimize works as a rough model. This is easy if you know the process that made them. It's the nature of a rough model you can poke holes to it by finding exceptions, but this doesn't make the model useless.
Tim might be making a stronger claim than this. If that's the case I probably don't agree with it.
OK, I'm in complete agreement with you.